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I believe it is called "Bud", "Bud Light", etc., while the Czech company uses the "Budweiser" name.

And even that was contentious.

More importantly, why is a member of Congress more important that I am? So it is bad to spy on me but REALLY BAD to spy on someone just because they are elected? Fucking elitism at its finest.

This isn't elitism - that's stuff like free primo parking spaces at the DC airport. This is about compromising their job. They are our representatives. When the NSA spies on one of them, they are spying on all of their constituents and undermining the most fundamental American value - democracy.

I bet these people also believe Bill Gates' vaccines are for the good of the children...

2007: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story

2013: http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-gates-foundations-hypocritical-investments/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=update&utm_campaign=socialflow

Wake up. You're part of the problem.

Theres no such thing as the contry club type *for the poor*.

There most certainly are much softer and pleasant prisons. And if you can afford the right lawyers, you will go here instead of Lompoc.
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-04-23/news/mn-1771_1_club-fed-eglin-federal-prison-camp-higher-security-prison

Just like cruise control systems on Winnebagos right?

Is THIS what you are babbling on about? http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/14/business/fi-tortmyths14

Actually, Sherlock Holmes is finally in the public domain. It took a court order to shake it loose, though.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-new-sherlock-holmes-copyright-20131230,0,5610784.story

"The Pentagon’s strengthening grip on Hollywood"
http://www.salon.com/2011/08/29/sirota_military_movies/
"The U.S. military's Hollywood connection"
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/21/entertainment/la-ca-military-movies-20110821
http://movieline.com/2013/02/06/military-entertainment-complex-hollywood-pentagon-relationship-battleship-zero-dark-thirty/
Operation Hollywood
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/09/operation-hollywood
A script often self corrected until the use of mil equipment works out.
The UK, Australia, Germany, France all have their funding mixes for their own culture. The US mil movie/script 'corrections' aspect is well known, has been reported for years.

Shoot anyone against it.

Also. The FCC is filled to the gills with politically well connected, revolving door sycophants there to do industry's bidding before jumping back on the gravy train. It's the poster child for a watchdog agency overrun and infested with regulatory saboteurs and common's-hating overpavers.

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/20/136492206/new-republic-the-fccs-revolving-door-is-shameless

http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/search_result.php?agency=Federal+Communications+Commission&id=EIFCC

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62718-2004Nov19.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/30/business/la-fi-mo-powell-20130830

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/20/3670940/michael-powell-fcc-chariman-cable-companies-mercy-contet

The courts will decide if he engaged in computer crime and espionage. So far his activity is little different on the face of it than Philby's except enhanced with Soviet style political warfare techniques. (Remember the Soviet AIDs disinformation campaign?) Perhaps it is all as Snowden claims, or perhaps the former Soviet bloc intelligence officers are right and Snowden is a Russian asset. Russian intelligence tradecraft is among the best in the world, and they are patient.

As to the court cases, the only thing won so far is an injunction for 2 people. The matter has yet to be decided and appealed. It is very premature to claim victory for anybody. There are legal scholars that see things differently.

Another Problem With Judge Leon’s NSA Opinion: Absolute vs. Relative Measurements and Fourth Amendment Reasonableness
Can the DC Circuit Use the Mosaic Theory to Invalidate the NSA Telephony Metadata Program?

Bill Gates is a career criminal

Helmed Microsoft during a period in which it was found to have abused its monopoly position and engaged in other various anticompetitive behaviors, for which he was found personally (partly) culpable. Pardoned by Ashcroft under Bush.

who has hidden his wealth in a charitable foundation which invests the bulk of its money in evil corporations which kill people.[Citation needed]

Long, long ago, there was this citation. But now we also have this newer citation to play with.

This stuff isn't even from naturalnews. You can share it with your friends.

Yes, indeed there is blood on that man's hands.

Remember this blood? It continues to pour.

And now you think you can just undo the sins of your past by eradicating malaria, hunger, and illiteracy? Well, it won't work!

In fact, the Gates foundation will cure none of these things.

An AC posted this elsewhere in this thread: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,290910,full.story

Doesn't mention contract lock-ins; does describe how the foundation invests in the very companies which are the source of the problems its charitable works are meant to reduce.

I'm reminded of the old medieval practice of buying forgiveness for your sins.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,290910,full.story

Electric car good, hot sauce bad.

The people of California have a government they richly deserve.

California Median home value

I am not from California, but it is trivial to find out the median home value there. It is very uncommon for the average Californian to have $400,000+ to buy a home in full. They take out a mortgage to be able to buy the home initially..

I have no idea what the stats in Canada are to compare, but it appears that 1/3 of American homeowners have no mortgage.

A homeowner with a mortgage does indeed own their home. They can do with it as they wish. The mortgage holder can initiate foreclosure on the homeowner for breaking the terms of the mortgage, but the person that signs the mortgage is the owner of the home.

Now uses a conventional heating element, rather than a 100W bulb:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/23/business/la-fi-easy-bake-20110223

It's already going on on a smaller scale.
After the US, Germany and a few other countries have adopted the concept of "Free Speech Zones" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone ) the Russians are now planning to do the same: http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-protest-zone-at-2014-sochi-olympics-20131210,0,7900728.story#axzz2n6VNDMNf

Nonsense, they fixed this leak.

What then is left? Well... we have the emperical fact of the healthcare premiums going up. That's a fact.

Premiums always go up, it's called inflation. But the rate of increase is near all time lows.

We have 70 percent of doctors in many areas boycotting the ACA. That is a fact.

No, it's not a fact. It's a straight up lie. You're just gullible.

We have people with serious illnesses that were covered under the old system losing their healthcare and having new healthcare policies offered that are twice as expensive. That is a fact.

That's an anecdote. I could dig up dozens of counter examples, but why waste my time? You're just performing a Gish Gallop.

I hate to reply to an AC, but I hate wrong information more.

Multiple stories corroborate that the actual number potentially losing healthcare is one million, not the five million the AC suggested. These are policies that don't meet the ACA's minimum coverage levels, and thus are no longer allowed to be offered.

This has been a point pounded hard by those on the right ("If you like your plan you can keep it" was a lie!), wanting to point to people losing insurance. The left's typical response is that the plans are junk plans, and folks are better off being forced to get a real plan. Since those arguments are all over the web, I'm going to skip past them. Visit Google News to find them if you have missed out.

As is often the case, reality isn't simple enough to be captured in a sound byte. The law had a provision to grandfather old plans:

So what happens to the plans that don't meet the new minimum standards? They will likely disappear. A handful of existing plans will be grandfathered in, but the qualifying criteria for that is hard to meet: Members have to have been enrolled in the plan before the ACA passed in 2010, and the plan has to have maintained fairly steady co-pay, deductible and coverage rates until now.

What insurers have done is made sure no pre-2010 plan stayed in effect (yes, they cancel millions of plans every year), and for the few that have they have made sure the co-pays, deductibles, and coverage have changed significantly. Why would they do that? Well there are a about 4 million people on junk plans. How bad are these plans?

One example: the "Go Blue Health Services Card'' for which cancer survivor Donnamarie Palin of New Port Richey has paid $79 a month. For that, she gets $50 toward each primary care doctor visit, $15 toward each drug — but zero coverage for big-ticket items like hospital stays.

Get in a car wreck, no coverage. Get cancer, no coverage. Need a wart removed, no coverage. Break your arm, no coverage. Yeah. That bad. But they have one thing going for them, they are cheap. $79/month if you don't understand what you're (not) getting seems pretty cheap compared to hundreds of dollars for real insurance. In plain, simple terms these people were going to get a price hike. Now, you're an executive at a health insurance provider faced with the prospect that 4 million people are going to get letters saying "Your $79/month policy is going away, we'd like to offer you a $450/month policy, but it covers a lot more!" Yeah, that's going to lead to lots of bad press on the evening news.

But the way ACA was written had a convenient out. Make sure the law forced the cancellation of the plans, and then flip the narrative to say the government is canceling your plan. It should be no surprise that it took insurance executives about a nanosecond to figure this out and set the wheels in motion. Just make sure no plan qualified or could be grandfathered in.

Now that the Scooby Doo "how did they do it" moment is over, there is one bit left to tidy up. The savvy reader will notice 1 million Californians had their policy cancelled, but o

No, I do not believe it. I believe that you just made it up. Do you have a citation? Because a Google search finds nothing except a law banning "aggressive begging" (blocking traffic, badgering or pursuing people, loitering next to ATMs, etc.).

I wouldn't go so far as to accuse him of just making it up. There are several places he might have picked up the idea. Some, the courts overrule the laws or parts of it. Some are just proposed. Some require a permit to 'gather' (eg more than 5 people). On Thanksgiving, the church should have 1 person with food in the park. 4 at a time, the homeless could come over. Then, walk away and 4 more could come up. I think the homeless should not be able to look at each other either ;) Get a permit right? I believe in the Orlando case, the problem was, you can only get a permit twice a year for each park so you have to move around. Are the activist intentionally getting in trouble making their point? Sure. Does feeding the poor in the same park, week after week, putting wear and tear on the park? Sure.



Orlando, FL
Raleigh, NC
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Philadelphia, PA
Dallas, TX
Houston, TX
NYC, NY
USA Today
LA Times

Lots of good ideas come from individuals without a profit motive. Leonard Kleinrock has said he wasn't motivated by economics when he helped create the internet. From http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/24/opinion/la-oe-morrison-use24-2009oct24:

Back then, the early pioneers were not at all motivated by money. Our gratification was to share ideas with each other, do good technology and have others use it.

[Interviewer:] You approached AT&T with packet switching and they weren't interested.

[Kleinrock:] Worse than that. They said it wouldn't work. Then they said even if it does work, we want nothing to do with it. At that time, all their revenue was coming from voice communications. They made a long-term mistake big-time, but short term you could understand it.

Biz is often too short-sighted to invest in long-term disruptive technologies. That's where govt can step in to fund it. I think the best way is to provide a basic income, so that individuals can have a choice to be free of the market and innovate disruptively on their own or in ad hoc collaborations using the unprecedented communication tool that is the internet.

Taxes aren't needed to fund a basic income. Simply create govt bonds, which the Fed expands its balance sheet to buy. Or former taxpayers can buy govt bonds and get interest from funding the government.

Innovation is the key. As long as we keep advancing knowledge, we can create as much money as we feel.

Most motorcycles use more fuel than a car.

not true. Comparing apples to apples (i.e. no hybrids or electrics), bikes are going to use less gasoline per distance traveled than a car.

That A.C. Gilbert Chemistry is widely considered to be the Gold Standard, and is what most-likely initially inspired the notable chemical researcher Walter White of Albuquerque.

Sadly, Walter White passed-away this past year: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/04/entertainment/la-et-st-breaking-bad-albuquerque-newspaper-runs-obit-for-walter-white-20131004

There is no fixed answer to that. The density isn't uniform, the thickness isn't uniform, the thermal conductivity isn't uniform, the surface roughness and flow rates of currents past the surface aren't uniform.

It's nice to come up with models, but one has to be cautious of the output when it involves making many assumptions.

Some fluctuations in volcanic activity can be expected from variations in geomagnetic activity.
The effects of some variations propagate more quickly than previously believed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-volcano-mantle-magma-highway-to-hell-20130801,0,1351433.story

They're using temperature a year after the fact to draw conclusions on energy release and fault thickness? Good grief.
If that weren't already absurd, the whole area is subject to huge temperature variations from unstable volcanic activity.
Southwest of Japan a new island is sprouting up!

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-underwater-volcano-new-island-japan-20131121,0,838965.story

Meanwhile, Bill Gates is on the ground giving billions to eradicate disease -- something that actually improves peoples' lives in a meaningful way. But we still have to slam Microsoft, because Billy boy and his minions are so evil.

It appeared that Gates had become (at least) less evil, but then, facts show that some things just don't change-- it appears even the Gates charity is evil, making more money on the suffering of the folks they are nominally helping, than what they are giving:

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story

Gates + Foundation is also pushing to destroy public schools, and replace them with private, for profit, mc wages for teachers schools.

Of course, trying to get his partner to sign away his part of the Microsoft empire while in the hospital (and presumed dying) was probably the height of class for Gates.

He and his company have the worst business practices that have been matched by few, but never surpassed.

Microsoft got their start exclusively selling stuff they stole (msdos [digital], flight simulator, disk doubler [stack electronics], windows NT [digital] etc.), and used the courts and their war chest of $$ to destroy those that tried to fight back. And, if that didn't work, MS would counter-sue their victims. And if that didn't work, they would buy the company, and fire everybody (Stack). Or in the case of Digital, just keep fucking with them, until the founder commits suicide, and in his suicide note names Gates.

At the same time they put fake error messages in their products that were displayed randomly when competitors products [by Digital, for example] were used (even xor encrypt the code behind it, to make it harder to tell in a disassembly).

Also that build of win2k that was accidentally released with debugging symbols that had that variable named "NSA_KEY" which held a key that was automatically trusted for code signing. That NSA_KEY variable was added in win98. Under Gate's watch. So, (just guessing you use windows) your copy of windows is likely facilitating NSA spying on you and your family.

Yeah, Billy boy did all of that. He is a scumbag.

You need to review your history (and present day facts) a bit.

Meanwhile, I'm not sure that Google is "for good, rainbows, and ponies" but Google hasn't even begun to approach the level of evil of Gates and Microsoft.

All that said, I fully agree with you on this bit, but MS and Gates really do deserve the hate (forever):

None of the major IT companies gave a rats ass about user privacy until Snowden leaked his information.

Not quite the same, but http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/14/local/la-me-pedophiles-20130115

We do? Name one.

Fox News can't find one. Every time they give an example like that, and somebody checks their facts, it turns out Fox was wrong.

href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579171710423780446">http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304527504579171710423780446

There is one.

Good example. That's what I meant when I said every time you check their facts, they turn out to be wrong. In this case, it turned out that UnitedHealthcare had decided to drop Sundby's policy even before Obamacare.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/11/04/2881581/wall-street-journal-horror-story-cancer-patient-losing-doctors-wrong/
The Real Reason That The Cancer Patient Writing In Today’s Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance
By Igor Volsky on November 4, 2013
But Sundby shouldn’t blame reform — United Healthcare dropped her coverage because they’ve struggled to compete in California’s individual health care market for years and didn’t want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby.
The company, which only had 8,000 individual policy holders in California out of the two million who participate in the market, announced (along with a second insurer, Aetna) that it would be pulling out of the individual market in May. The company could not compete with Anthem Blue Cross, Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Permanente, who control more than 80 percent of the individual market.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-horror-story-20131105,0,6361694.story
A closer look at the WSJ's newest Obamacare horror story
By Michael Hiltzik
November 6, 2013, 6:05 a.m.
As for Sundby, the idea that in the pre-Obamacare era, once UnitedHealth bailed out on her—as it surely intended to do eventually—she’d be able to find any insurer willing to cover her cancer treatment without restrictions, allow her to choose her own doctors and therapies without limit, and cap her personal financial exposure at any but a stratospheric level is, to put it bluntly, ludicrous. She may or may not know that, but the editors of the Wall Street Journal certainly do, and for them to put her story out as if her insurance problems would disappear if only the Affordable Care Act ceased to exist is nothing short of malpractice.

I've been reading the Wall Street Journal for 40 years. I used to read the editorial page every day, because years ago, you could trust them to get their facts right (or more impressively, to apologize when they got it wrong). They used to be the best news source in the world. Now they've turned into a Pravda for the right wing of the Republican Party.

I think Obamacare was a disaster. It's a conservative plan, based on a Heritage Foundation model, run through the private insurance companies, which are the most inefficient part of the system. We should have had single payer, which would have solved all those problems Sundby was complaining about, at half the cost. But Obamacare is better than what we had before.

Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans October 1, 1989
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/assuring-affordable-health-care-for-all-americans

You mean the event titled "Health Care for the Poor and Underserved." So why did the Democrats do a one-size fits all for the whole country instead of expanding Medicare/Medicaid? And I don't see how something from 1989 has anything to do with the previous Democrat-Controlled Congress in 2009-2010 session years.

Obamacare's hidden parentage
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/10/daily-chart-1

In other news the word "the" is also found a large percentage of documents when cross-referenced. (That's really grasping at straws cherry-picking random words/ideas from "any" bill/topic, like "Nursing home transparency" being used in the chart on the page you linked to)

Timeline of the health care law
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/28/politics/supreme-court-health-timeline

Your own link proves the opposite since the Dates mentioned when the ACA was passed was under "Democrat" control of congress. (You just proved my point)

A healthcare history lesson for the GOP
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/15/opinion/la-oe-mansbridge-obamacare-democrats-single-payer-20131015

I'm not sure what this article was getting at but it was way after the ACA was passed and after Democrats lost control in the house.

The entire ACA/ObamaCare was/is/and will be a DEMOCRAT/LIBERAL caused problem! Republicans/Conservatives had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!

No need to repeat here.

You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.
The legislative and ideological history of the law is out there for you to read.
You must have slept through a year of headlines and negotiations to have such a poor grasp of the what happened with the law.

And you have yours but your "facts" did not address the majority of my Opinion (most were from way before or way after it's passage and have nothing to do with it when it was done)

Name one Republican who voted for the "Current" bill when it was passed.

Name one Republican who wrote any of the law/amendments when it was being drafted 09-10. (Dems held them in backrooms in the middle of the night after they went home, sounds real honest of them doesn't it?)

It was DEMOCRATS who wrote and passed the current law when they had a super-majority. Passed under the most corrupt practices ever seen (bribes, backroom last-minute deals to even their "own" party, labor unions/lobbyists/obama/democrat BFFs getting exemptions,etc...) They even argued before the Supreme Court that it was not a tax at the same time telling the justices that they had the authority under the tax laws since it was a tax (they even called them out on it a few times)

This law would have "NEVER" passed in the first place from even Democrats if they went around saying what they are now about the details. (which is why it should be repealed and the whole thing started over from scratch with an honest debate by both parties)

You mean the "Plan B" that had absolutely no Republican input (they were locked out of the committee rooms)

Plan A was a single payer system.
The most generous way to describe the Republican position on Plan B (the individual mandate) is that they were for it before they were against it.

Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans October 1, 1989
http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/assuring-affordable-health-care-for-all-americans

Obamacare's hidden parentage
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/10/daily-chart-1

Timeline of the health care law
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/28/politics/supreme-court-health-timeline

A healthcare history lesson for the GOP
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/15/opinion/la-oe-mansbridge-obamacare-democrats-single-payer-20131015

The entire ACA/ObamaCare was/is/and will be a DEMOCRAT/LIBERAL caused problem! Republicans/Conservatives had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!

You can have your own opinion, but you can't have your own facts.
The legislative and ideological history of the law is out there for you to read.
You must have slept through a year of headlines and negotiations to have such a poor grasp of the what happened with the law.

On the one hand we are all glad that he persevered, on the other hand, he was the "Reverend" Martin Luther King Jr. and he was cheating on his wife with multiple women. Hypocritical scumbag, even though also a great man.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
--Cardinal Richelieu

Here's an article on the danger of wiretapping to the political process.

Yea... I've got an even better one for you. Remember when there was that big scandal about Google Street View cars getting caught "accidentally" wardriving and everyone couldn't believe they could have done such a thing on accident?

I had almost forgot about it too.

Thanks to ex staff, fired staff and other 'trusted' countries staff, contractors its all in the mix now.
If you have the cash and contracts you can 'run' the same systems on any scale.
The "worry" is really who you upset - a brand name, their private security, a gov, a cult, a faith, a nation, some criminal group, law enforcement, ex law enfacement, a political party.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/08/a-spy-in-the-jungle/60770/
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-corporations-increasingly-spying-on-nonprofits-group-says-20131120,0,3211134.story
http://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/our-publications/policy-briefs/policy-brief-corporate-and-police-spying-on-activists.html

Bah.

Will they honor Pan Am tickets?

Now, given that, the six million dollar question: how many Chevy Volts have caught fire so far?

Good question... I don't know, but apparently enough that it was investigated:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/21/business/la-fi-autos-volt-20120121

I more or less expect them to reach the same conclusion with tesla btw.

No, California found ways around the "starve the beast" ideologues (or Norquist fundamentalists, or faux-conservatives, or whatever you want to call them), made cuts in spending, and/or got lucky. Whatever the case, California is actually doing much better budget wise.

Summary mentions an article from the LA Times.

Here's the link:

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-volcano-ice-antarctica-20131115,0,6645564.story

most people are boring as hell. Even the ones that think they're interesting.

However, the ones who are interesting tend to be pretty important to society. Guys like MLK, presidential candidates, potential supreme court nominees. Those sorts of people. When the government has access to their private communications it is just too easy to use that access to neuter any people who might challenge the current government.

"Russia's KGB has done things worse then our CIA, and nobody went back and convicted those guys."

Actually quite a few KGB agents have been caught and convicted and rotted in prison. Not all, or even nearly all, no, but certainly enough to prove your statement wrong. The US has caught a number of them over the years, but even much smaller and less powerful states such as Estonia have done it too.

Sovereign immunity is some real bullshit, but it does NOT apply here. Sovereign immunity is what is cited to prevent individuals from suing the federal government in the federal court system. It does not in any way shape or form prohibit a sovereign state from charging, arresting, convicting, and punishing those who commit criminal acts on their soil. Even your link says nothing of the sort - if you had researched the case that is referring to you would have known that it involved civil suits against a successor government directly for the acts of a former regime. It may be a flawed judgement but it doesnt matter - even taking it at face value it simply doesnt apply.

We arent talking about civil suits against regimes. We are talking about criminal charges against criminal actors. If you had actually read the judgement you would have noticed e.g. paragraph 87 specifically explains that foreclosing the former does not rule out the latter:

"The Court does not consider that the United Kingdom judgment in Pinochet (No. 3) ([2000] 1 AC 147; ILR, Vol. 119, p. 136) is relevant, notwithstanding the reliance placed on that judgment by the Italian Court of Cassation in Ferrini. Pinochet concerned the immunity of a former Head of State from the criminal jurisdiction of another State, not the immunity of the State itself in proceedings designed to establish its liability to damages."

When folks like the Koch brothers are found to directly affect local politics across the entire nation, donating millions to sway election decisions, it becomes simple fact rather than fear.

Fear itself is not a bad thing, but Irrational fear is. Frightened people are easily controlled. Although your argument might appear to put my statement in the same class, it only appears that way. For example, death panels were widely used to scare people when health care reform was begin drafted. The simple facts are quite different with specific text preventing the fed from denying any type of medical care or 'rationing'. This would be an irrational fear. In my statement, I indicated that big money is pulling the strings. The fact that these political organizations must often disclose their donors, and those donors happen to be folks like the Koch brothers, puts the statement into fact, rather than irrational fear.

http://philanthropy.com/article/Koch-Brothers-Influence/140227/

Their donations are public record. They spend millions to sway elections towards business friendly politicians. They aren't the only ones. Does this follow the same category that implied the president was friendly towards the 9/11 Terrorists that killed thousands of Americans, that Death Panels would be used to let the Fed decide who lives and who dies, etc. The above fear mongering had no basis in fact. Even worse, it was peddled by both news outlets, and directly from the mouths of representatives of the government itself. Pailin and her anti-immunization rant is a good example of fear based rhetoric with no basis in fact.

The following examples are reports, obtained from public disclosures of donations by various political groups, some loosely defined 'charities', etc.

http://www.lung.org/associations/states/california/for-the-media/inthenews/study-tobacco-money.html
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/05/01/12591/gun-lobbys-money-and-power-still-holds-sway-over-congress
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/11/local/la-me-special-interests-20100712

Are they in the same category?

Their brand of politics managed to shut down the entire government for several weeks because they disagreed with the details of a single law.

Cool! Which government did it shut down? I mean there was the 18% of the government shutdown a little while ago (which wasn't as long as the partial shutdowns in 1978, you know... part of that period from 1977 to 1988 where there was a non-essential shutdown every year, sans two, nor as long as the 21 day partial shutdown in 1996). So... what country was this "entire government" shutdown in? Because it wasn't in the US. Although the US does a fair number of partial shutdowns, long before the Tea Party Menace appeared.

Government workers were furloughed by the hundreds of thousands... and by furloughed I mean, they just stopped getting paid. And couldn't get unemployment.

You generally don't get unemployment when you're getting paid. And since they got paid despite not working, that's why they didn't get unemployment. In fact, they got paid in the same monthly pay period.

You're one of those low information voters, aren't you? We'll find out if you try to justify your position in spite of facts not matching what you thought, rather than simply accepting new facts. You don't have to agree with anybody, but you do appear to be very ignorant about this topic. Not a terrible thing, just a current situation.

This has a few more: Found: A never-before-seen asteroid with six comet-like tails - latimes.com

Is the above true, and if so don't the victims deserve to know, not be used as an example?

We'll never know if it's true based on the above -- a little birdie told Kevin Drum that "[t]here's something fishy going on here." Really?

You would hope that people around here would be particularly sensitive to the folly of apples-to-oranges comparisons. The devil is truly in the details with respect to comparing two different health insurance policies, given that there are so many variables that people just don't think about, e.g.:

• Deductible
• Out-of-pocket max
• Actual age (The author bases his haughty conclusion on his assumption that "Deborah looks to be around 45" -- really?)
• Smoking status
• Provider network
  • This is one of the most diabolical ways these exchange plans are able to offer superficially lower rates, and right now it's difficult to impossible to really understand which doctors actually will accept any of these plans.
  • The secondary consequence here is that plans are paying, e.g., 70% not of out-of-network providers' actual fees, but what your insurance company deems to be the "usual and customary fee" for that service. That sounds great until you receive a bill from the out-of-network provider for your 30% of the usual/customary fee, plus the remainder of the difference between that fee and the provider's actual fee. As an added bonus, this "balance billing" does not count toward your plan's out-of-pocket max.

Not a single one of those variables is analyzed in your linked article, or the article it links to. Their superficial analysis (along with every single other piece like this I've seen) is akin to saying, "that greedy car dealer was trying to sell you a 'full-sized sedan' for $X, but look--over here you can get a 'full-sized sedan' for $X/2!!!"

No, but he's trying to put the good PR spin on things.

How about this one to start.
http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,2533850.story#axzz2jXU69lfS

Basically, he does humanitarian work to the locals, but is a large stake holder in the factories that are making the locals sick. Because he's "helping" them, he's the good guy. Because he's only a large stake holder in the factory, he's not the bad guy. He brings in more money from the factory than he puts out to help the locals.

Profit/Loss. If you bring in $100M, and you pay out $20M, and look like the good guy, you're doing it right, as it's still an $80M profit. Since you're dumping the $20M in to "help" the people, the locals won't complain.

If he had more loss than profit, he would simply cut ties to both sides. It's not worth it.

I don't know how we could kickstart competition either. Perhaps nobody knows that. That's why my preference is to go with a solution that is already known to work because the entire first world but us has already done it.

Except they haven't figured it out either. The fact they're beating us handily is merely proof of how fucked up our system is, not of how good theirs is. Healthcare costs over there have been rising substantially as well, and many of those systems are making alot of hard choices. NHS comes to mind as a system that appears to be struggling heavily:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10162848/NHS-is-about-to-run-out-of-cash-top-official-warns.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/britains-rx-to-fix-health-care-a-pen-and-paper/article15120806/
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/08/opinion/la-oe-dalrymple-british-health-system-20120808

Single payer isn't a silver bullet. I wish people would stop thinking it is. It comes with its own host of problems.

I this this qualifies: Soviets Sponsor Spread of AIDS Disinformation

The Koch brothers links to those organizations have been known for some time: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2012/11/koch-brothers-california.html

Left as an exercise to the reader: figuring out the distinction between what is stated by the entity know as "Koch Industries" and what is actually done by the Koch brothers.

Good luck to Zients. He's a good guy and I don't doubt the code can be repaired with enough effort. A lot of effort, maybe, but it can be done.

But it might not matter. The Los Angeles Times had a story about how the real code running the show (the legalese in the ACA law) may have a fatal flaw in it. The federal government may not be able to grant subsidies to low income people in the states that did not set up their own exchanges. The law specifically says the states must do it in order for the money to flow. So 36 of the 50 may not be able to get the money. But they are still subject to the penalty for not signing up. This means the people least able to afford insurance get hammered. And since they are treated differently than people in the other 14 states that do have exchanges, you can bet an Equal Protection lawsuit will be quick in coming.

Federal judge is due to issue the initial ruling soon.

We're not torturing anyone anymore? I'm pretty sure the United Nations disagrees.